Curiosmos preview – “Adorable world building”

• Smash asteroids into your planet
• See what you end up creating
• Save your planets from black holes

When it comes to mobile, some games often feel more like toys, due to their relaxing nature and the ability to tinker around instead of chasing tasks and rushing forward due to timers. Curiosmos is one such game, where you may feel like you are playing with a digital toy.

Curiosmos is adorable. You find yourself creating a little world by throwing rocks into each other, in space. Everything feels floaty and satisfying as it smashes together. The visuals seem to mimic clay, creating an adorable world. Your planet even has a little face, smiling back at you, as you increase their size.

Once your planet is created, you can zoom into it, see its atmosphere and throw more items against it to see what happens. These little moments of discovery are sort of like mini-puzzles, though not solving them won’t cause anything to happen. You can spend the rest of your time just watching the world move or digging into the surface using rocks. Or, you can hatch eggs and create life and slowly develop your world as you continue through.

Soon, in Curiosmos, you will be able to create volcanoes, beaches, mountains – basically everything you may have seen in the real world. The surface is affected by the different resources you throw against it, so being mindful of what you swing into it becomes the name of the game.

As your planet grows, you can start adding moons to its atmosphere, which can move your planet in its solar system. Moving the planet will change its position to the sun, which will continue to change how your planet is. You can also start to create more planets, grow your solar system and experiment with how the distance from the sun can affect what you are doing. There are just a lot of options in what you can do and how to play in Curiosmos.

Everything isn’t all good within your solar system, however. Over time, you will find black holes appear looking to suck in your resources and even your planets. You will need to collect specific materials to keep your planet alive, through creating wormholes. You can discover more about wormholes by the floating satellites that seem to appear around your planet, checking out what you have created.

There is something deeply satisfying about the movement and way of discovery in Curiosmos. Throwing these little rocks against stuff and watching them float across the screen just feels good. I was able to play a demo at Courage XL and the European Game Showcase at GDC, where I enjoyed the style and the feel of creating your own world. It’s a calm experience, full of discovery, where you will feel surprised and satisfied as you discover something new.